by Meg Grehan
Contents
* * *
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
epilogue
Find Your Story
Read the Vanderbeekers Series
About the Author
Connect with HMH on Social Media
First US edition
Copyright © 2019 by Meg Grehan
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
hmhbooks.com
First published in Ireland as The Deepest Breath, by Little Island Books, 2019
Cover illustration © 2021 by Ahra Kwon
Cover design and hand lettering by Andrea Miller
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Grehan, Meg, author.
Title: Deepest breath / Meg Grehan.
Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. | Originally published in Dublin, Ireland, by Little Island Books in 2019. | Audience: Ages 10 to 12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: Struggling with her feelings for a female classmate, an eleven-year-old Irish girl tries to confide in her mother, the person she trusts most in the world.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019037075 (print) | LCCN 2019037076 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358354758 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780358355458 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Novels in verse. | Identity—Fiction. | Self-acceptance—Fiction. | Coming out (Sexual orientation)—Fiction. | Lesbians—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.5.G7 De 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.5.G7 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019037075
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019037076
v1.0121
For Dylan
For always making everything
A little less scary
one
I know a lot of things
About a lot of things
But the thing I know the most about
Is me
Stevie
I know that I am eleven years and two months old
And that my hair is brown
And my eyes are green
And I’m allergic to peanuts
I know I have a mum
Whose room is right next to mine
And that sometimes we tap and scratch on the wall at night
Morse code is good for scaring nightmares away
I know that
I know I have a dad
And I know that he lives far away
And I know that’s not my fault
And I know that that’s
OK
I know that I have a funny name
Because the doctors said my mum was going to have a baby boy
But then I popped out
A slimy wriggly baby girl
And she liked the name too much by then
So Stevie it was
And Stevie I am
I know I like the color purple
And things that sparkle
And science and books
And cats and stars and space
I know that I broke my pinkie finger once
And that now
It sticks out funny
I know I’m afraid of zombies and clowns
And not much else
I know I can be brave
But that sometimes it’s hard
I know a lot
About me
There’s only one thing
In the whole of me
That I don’t know
It’s something funny
It’s in my chest
And sometimes my tummy
And always my head
It’s a fizzy feeling
Warm and squishy
And it makes me blush
And it only happens
When I look at my friend
Chloe
And I don’t know what it is
Exactly
two
At school I share a desk
With Chloe
And Andrew
And Robert
Us girls on one side
And the boys on the other
Robert likes football
And is really good at math
Way better than me
And he’s nice
Though we don’t talk much
Mostly he talks to Andrew
Andrew has been my friend
Ever since we were babies
And even though we didn’t choose to be friends
I’m glad we are
Though we don’t talk at school too much
Because I read a lot
And he likes to listen to Robert
Talk about football
Way more than I thought anyone could
Chloe paints her nails
A new color
Every week
On Mondays they are sleek and shiny and new
And on Fridays
They are all
Chipped
And bitten
And you have to look
Really close
To see what color they were
But I always know what color they were
I know last week they were pink
And the week before they were yellow
And the week before that they were orange
With tiny black bats on her pinkie nails
For Halloween
Chloe bites her nails
And the last of her nail polish
(Green this week, with sparkles)
Falls like radioactive snow onto our desk
I wipe some off my book
And try to concentrate
We’re learning about
Whales
Whales scare me a little
Because they’re so big
That I must be
So small
But still
I try to concentrate
And I write down
The most interesting things
In my notebook
My notebook
Is gigantic
It has five hundred pages
And a yellow cover
And a ribbon
For keeping your place
I’ve only used 124 pages
So far
But I will use them all
I’ll fill them up
And when every page
Is full of words
I’ll know
Just about
Everything
There is
To know
After school my auntie Judith picks me up
Because Mum is still at work
And it’s way too cold to walk
Although honestly
I think I could handle it
Because I’ve read about explorers
Who’ve survived way worse
And it isn’t even snowing
But Mum says I’ll catch my death
Which sounds
Dramatic
And scary
So I buckle myself into Auntie Judith’s car
And I listen as she tells me about
“The absolute rubbish the boss came out with today”
At dinner I tell Mum about whales
; “And then there’s the bowhead whale
And no one really knows how long they live
But once
Scientists found one
With a weapon from 1879
Eighteen seventy-nine!
Embedded in it
And that means
That it might’ve been
More than one hundred years old!
A hundred!
And once
They examined a bowhead whale’s eyes
And the amino acid inside them
Means that one of them
Might’ve lived to 211
Two hundred and eleven!”
And she gasps
And I feel smart
And interesting
And good good good
Except for deep inside
Where I feel
A squirming kind of
Fear
I have a nightmare that night
The first in three years
And seven months
I dream about the sea
Deep down
Where it isn’t really blue
But black
Like bruises or ink or midnight
Where you can’t tell up from down
Or right from left
Where there’s nowhere to go
I wake and I’m still underwater
And for a second
I hold my breath
Even though it hurts
Even though it feels like there’s gallons and gallons and gallons of water
Pressing down on my chest
Pinning me to my bed
I fling my arm out
Searching for the switch
To turn
My lamp
On to fill
The room
With light and then
When it’s on
When the room
Is orange
And warm
I can breathe
And the water is gone
I sit up in bed for the rest of the night
And read a book
I run my fingers across every page
Under every line
Every word
I make myself focus
On the paper
On how
Dry it is
And that
Makes me feel
Safe
I don’t like my room to be
Messy
But I think it likes to be
Just a little
Because it always is
I think it must do it
All by itself
Maybe while I’m asleep
Or at school
Or reading
Or whenever I look away
For just a minute
Because my clothes are always
On the floor
And I swear
I didn’t put them there
On purpose
And because my teddies
Don’t like to stay on my bed
In their neat line
When they have places to be
And important business to discuss
And because books never seem to make it
Back to their shelves at night
They have sleepovers under my bed
And holidays on my desk
And naps under my pillow
But I think
That’s OK
Because maybe
When I sleep
They’ll whisper to me
And maybe
When I wake up
Everything might make
Just a little
More sense
By the time the sun comes up
I’ve decided
I won’t tell Mum about the nightmare
I’ve decided
I don’t want to worry her
My mum worries a lot
About a lot of things
I don’t think she knows that I know
But I see it
I see how she picks at her nail beds
And looks all around her
When a what-if pops into her head
And I
Definitely
Don’t want to be a
What-if
three
Chloe’s nails are blue today
And she’s talking about magic
Chloe is great at magic
Which makes sense to me
Though I’m not sure why
She can flip cards and make little balls disappear
And she can pull coins from behind your ear
I know it isn’t real
I do
But there’s a part of me that doesn’t
At the same time
It’s raining
So hard you can barely hear anything else
And at lunch
We have to stay inside
I try to read my book but the noise of the rain
And my whole class yelling
All at once
Makes my head
Feel like it might fall off
So instead
I watch Chloe practice her magic
“For my next trick!”
Chloe says
In a voice that sounds like
Glitter and cotton candy and popping candy
“I’ll need
A lovely assistant!”
I stare at her hands
At her blue nail polish
And the way she’s holding the playing cards
Like she knows
Knows for certain
That she won’t drop them
Even though there’s so many
And I know
For sure
I would drop them
“Stevie
Stevie?”
I blink
And she’s looking at me
“That’s you”
She says
“What’s me?”
I say
“My lovely assistant”
She says
And I say
Nothing
Instead my throat closes a little
And chomps down whatever words I would’ve said
Her lovely assistant
“OK”
I say
And my voice sounds funny
Not at all like my voice
More like
A squeak
“Pick a card
Any card!”
She booms
And I do
I pick a
Three of hearts
And blush a little
Why am I blushing?
And put it back in the pack
I don’t know
She shuffles the cards
In a showy
Exaggerated way
And it looks so cool
I can’t take my eyes off her hands
Then
“Ta-da!
Is this your card?”
She booms
Not caring that she’s louder than everyone else in the room combined
Or that she’s made Andrew and Robert both jump
I laugh a little
Because they look so startled
But also
Because
It is my card
And despite all the things I know
I have no idea
How she’s done it
And for once
For the first time
I love not knowing
four
I know a lot of things
I know that
Because I can look at my notebook
And see pages and pages of things I know
And because people say it
A lot
Sometimes in a good way
Sometimes not
But there are so many things
That I don’t know
There are so many things to know
And the list gets
bigger every single day
New plants are found
New animals are discovered
Inventions invented
Diseases diagnosed
Places charted
Words spoken
Decisions made
And sometimes
It all feels
Too much
Too big
Like I’m running behind a train
And it’s chugging along
Fast fast faster
And I’ll never catch up
I don’t even know everything
There is to know
About trains
It makes my stomach ache
Thinking about it
It makes my stomach ache
And my head feel
Noisy
I tell my mum at dinner
When she’s putting too much cheese on her spaghetti
Mountains of cheese
I tell her
I feel like everything moves too much
And I feel
Like everything is too much
And I’ll never understand it all
Or know it all
Or see it all
And it makes me
Sad
And angry
And tired
And over-over-overwhelmed
Mum stops piling grated cheese on her food
And looks at me
Like she isn’t sure what to say
This happens sometimes
And I always
Always feel bad
Because she worries
I can see the worry
Slip into her head
And pour down her face